Eight years in the making and delayed four times, Cyberpunk 2077 arrived on the eve of its December 2020 launch carrying the weight of extraordinary expectation. When a CD Projekt Red quality assurance tester quietly revealed he had logged over 175 hours in a single, unhurried playthrough and was still not finished, it offered something rare in the long arc of anticipation: a concrete, human-scaled measure of what had been built. The disclosure positioned the game not merely as a product finally delivered, but as a world capacious enough to absorb the years of waiting that preceded it.
CDPR Dev Claims Cyberpunk 2077 Offers 175+ Hours of Gameplay
175 hours into one playthrough, and still going.
Mark
So a developer played for 175 hours and was still going. That's the headline. But what does that actually tell us about the game?
Mimi
It tells us the game is built to accommodate different playstyles. Babiel wasn't rushing—he was playing stealthily, looting everything, using every system. That's not how everyone plays.
Luke
Right, and that's the key caveat. He said it was "one of my ongoing slow paced playtroughs." One. That suggests he might have multiple saves going, or that this is his particular approach, not necessarily the baseline experience.
Mimi
Exactly. He's a QA tester, so he's probably exploring more deliberately than a typical player would. He's testing systems, not just following the story.
Mark
So 175 hours is a ceiling, not a floor?
Luke
It's a data point from one person playing one way. It's useful information, but it's not a guarantee that everyone will get 175 hours. Some players will finish faster.
Mimi
But it does suggest the game is dense. There's enough content that someone can spend that much time and still have more to do. That's different from a game that's 175 hours because it's padded.
Mark
And he mentioned you can change difficulty anytime. Why does that matter?
Mimi
Because it removes the pressure of committing to a difficulty at the start. If you pick Hard and it's too much, you can dial it back. That's player-friendly design.
Luke
Though we should note that's just what he said. We don't know how many people will actually use that feature, or whether it's a workaround for difficulty balancing issues or a genuine design choice.
Mark
Fair. So what's the real story here?
Mimi
A developer is saying the game is substantial and flexible. That's worth noting three weeks before launch.
Le Pouls
- After eight years of announcements, trailers, and four delays, the pressure on Cyberpunk 2077 to justify its existence had become almost crushing by late 2020.
- A single tweet from QA tester Lukasz Babiel — revealing 175+ hours logged on one slow, stealthy, hardest-difficulty playthrough with no end in sight — cut through the noise like a signal flare.
- The number reframed the conversation: this wasn't a sprint through a main story, but a methodical immersion in every system, every loot pile, every possibility the game offered.
- Measured against The Witcher 3's 70–120 hours including major DLC, Cyberpunk 2077 appeared set to dwarf its predecessor in sheer scale before any expansions were even planned.
- Babiel's note that difficulty could be adjusted at any point during a playthrough added a layer of accessibility, signaling the experience could be shaped to fit the player rather than the reverse.
- The promise of volume was real — but whether the hours would feel earned, whether the world would hold together under scrutiny, remained the question no tester's tweet could fully answer.
Eight years in the making and delayed four times, Cyberpunk 2077 arrived on the eve of its December 2020 launch carrying the weight of extraordinary expectation. When a CD Projekt Red quality assurance tester quietly revealed he had logged over 175 hours in a single, unhurried playthrough and was still not finished, it offered something rare in the long arc of anticipation: a concrete, human-scaled measure of what had been built. The disclosure positioned the game not merely as a product finally delivered, but as a world capacious enough to absorb the years of waiting that preceded it.
Three weeks before Cyberpunk 2077's December 10, 2020 release date, a quality assurance tester at CD Projekt Red posted a quiet update on Twitter that landed with unexpected force. Lukasz Babiel had already spent 175 hours inside the game — and he wasn't close to done.
The context mattered. The game had been announced eight years prior and delayed four times. By November 2020, the fanbase had consumed every trailer and developer diary, and anticipation had curdled into something closer to desperate hope. Babiel's post felt like the first honest data point in a long campaign of carefully managed hype.
What made the number meaningful was what it represented. Babiel wasn't rushing. He was playing on the hardest difficulty, moving stealthily, looting thoroughly, and experimenting with every system available — the kind of playthrough someone attempts when they have nowhere else to be. His 175 hours were not a ceiling; they were a floor, with more still ahead of him.
The comparison to The Witcher 3 was inevitable. CD Projekt Red's previous flagship offered around 70 hours of main campaign content, stretching to roughly 120 hours with its two major DLC expansions. Cyberpunk 2077, by Babiel's accounting, would exceed that total before any expansions were even announced.
Babiel also noted that difficulty settings could be changed at any point during a playthrough — a small but meaningful detail suggesting the game was designed to meet players where they were, not lock them into an early decision.
For a game carrying this much accumulated expectation, the promise of 175+ hours was a concrete reassurance. Whether the content would feel alive, whether the systems would hold — those questions remained open. But for a moment, there was at least the certainty that Night City would take a very long time to exhaust.
Three weeks before Cyberpunk 2077 was set to launch, a quality assurance tester at CD Projekt Red posted a casual update on Twitter that sent a ripple through the waiting fanbase: he had already sunk 175 hours into the game and was nowhere near finished. Lukasz Babiel, whose job was to hunt bugs and stress-test systems before release, was still deep in his first playthrough—and he wanted people to understand what that number actually meant.
The game had been announced eight years earlier and delayed four times. By November 2020, with a December 10 release date finally locked in, the anticipation had become almost unbearable. Fans had consumed every trailer, every developer diary, every scrap of information about Night City and the world CD Projekt Red had built. When Babiel's post appeared, it landed like confirmation that the wait might actually be worth it.
But the 175 hours wasn't a casual sprint through the main story. Babiel clarified what those hours represented: a deliberate, unhurried playthrough on the hardest difficulty setting, where he played stealthily, looted everything, experimented with every system the game offered, and simply took his time. He was not rushing. He was not optimizing for speed. He was playing the way someone might play if they had nowhere else to be and wanted to wring every possibility from the experience. And he was still going.
The implication was clear: if a methodical, thorough playthrough could stretch past 175 hours, the actual total playtime available in Cyberpunk 2077 could be substantially longer. This mattered because it positioned the game as a genuine successor to The Witcher 3, CD Projekt Red's previous flagship title. The Witcher 3 offered roughly 70 hours of main campaign content, with the two major DLC expansions pushing the total to around 120 hours for players who wanted everything. Cyberpunk 2077, by this accounting, would dwarf that—175 hours before any expansions were even announced, let alone released.
Babiel also addressed the question of difficulty, which had been a point of concern for some players. The game would allow difficulty adjustments at any point during a playthrough, he explained. He suggested Normal or Hard for a first run if someone wanted a genuine challenge, though he acknowledged that Very Hard existed for those seeking something more punishing. The flexibility meant players wouldn't be locked into a choice made at the start; they could recalibrate as they went, finding the balance that worked for them.
For a game that had accumulated this much anticipation—that had been hyped so intensely for so long that failure seemed almost impossible—the promise of 175+ hours of content felt like a concrete answer to a question fans had been asking: Is this actually going to be worth the wait? Babiel's post suggested yes, at least in terms of sheer volume. Whether that volume would translate into quality, whether the systems would hold up, whether the world would feel as alive as the marketing suggested—those questions remained. But for a moment, in the weeks before launch, there was at least the reassurance that there would be plenty to do.
Citations marquantes
That's just one of my ongoing slow paced playtroughs on the hardest difficulty where I play more stealthily than usual, loot everything, use every feature the game has to offer, I take my time.— Lukasz Babiel, CDPR QA tester
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